HIDDEN HISTORY

Throughout history, firearms have been used by countless people for many different reasons. They were initially developed as a way to evolve warfare beyond confrontations of melee, but the technology quickly outpaced military strategy and opened the door to a growing market for sport.

By the 1500s, firearms weren’t just cumbersome hand cannons or arquebuses that used a burning rope to operate, they could be rifled, shrunken down to handgun size, and operate with an ignition system that didn’t require a slow burning match. With those developments, the uses of firearms expanded even further. This expansion, however, instilled a concern by royalty for misuse and, more specifically, for assassination.

Prior to the introduction of the concealable firearm and the invention of rifling, an assassin armed with a firearm needed to be in close proximity to a public